Lucas Punkari
In previous years, there wasn’t too much attention paid to those teams sitting outside the top 10 on Day 3 of the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship.
But that wasn’t the case this time around as anglers in the second and third divisions were involved in some early “hot seat” drama before the 10 teams in the championship division made their way into the Ice For Kids Arena.
Thanks to changes to the tournament format, teams sitting in 11th through 52 in the standings after Day 2 were put into the second division while teams ranked 53rd-95th were placed in division three.
Their weights from the first two days then were wiped clean to set the stage for the final day of competition.
The Division II title went to Tony Holenko and Larry Foss of International Falls, whose catch of 17.30 pounds was enough to beat out the 16.88-pound haul from Jim Sandelovich and Karl Howells.
“This feels pretty good,” Holenko said afterwards.
“We’ve done okay the last few years in this tournament, but it feels quite nice to be able to cash a cheque after this,” he enthused.
“This was my first time in this tournament, and I had a blast,” added Foss.
“I learned a lot from Tony and I can’t wait to do it again.”
Having just missed out on a berth in the top 10 following Friday’s weigh-in (their two-day total of 29.42 pounds wasn’t enough to oust Vince Godbout and Ron Tucker), the International Falls duo came back with a vengeance on Day 3 to take the Division II crown.
“We had two different strategies as we had a shallow and deep water bite going,” Holenko explained.
“I fished my home turf, which is Swell Bay and Red Gut, and we had lots of areas to fish from there,” he noted.
“Some of those holes can fill up with fish, and we didn’t find them until yesterday afternoon [Friday]. And then there were a lot of spots that were just going with fish.
“In the last two days, we could of filled up the entire boat with lots of big fish, it was crazy,” Holenko added.
Rounding out the top five in Division II were Chad Adrians/Caleb Colwell (16.28 pounds), Bill Godin/Ralph Galusha (16.13), and Paul Jewiss/Mike Graham (15.90).
In Division III, meanwhile, defending FFCBC champs Dorian Lindholm and Bill Wilcox bounced back from a rough first two days with a catch of 17.61 pounds.
“It worked out good for us this year, and I understand why the tournament is doing that,” said Wilcox.
“If it hadn’t been for the new format, I might have called it a day and not fought all of those big waves and stuff as we would have had no chance of getting a cheque the old way,” he noted.
Wilcox and Lindholm found themselves in the third division after two disappointing days to start the tournament, which left them with a total weight of 22.64 pounds and in a tie for 57th place with John and Tim Miller going into Day 3.
“A lot of what happened to us had to do with the conditions and the wind on Thursday,” Wilcox explained.
“The way that we fish, the calmer water makes things better for us,” he noted. “And since we had such a bad day on the first day, we saved our big fish for the last day.
“And that worked out good for us, especially with this new format.”
Jeremy and Jordan Anderson, who had the biggest fish on Day 3 at 4.75 pounds, finished in second place in Division III with 15.37 pounds.
Kelley Cirks and Doug Hanson were third at 15.28 pounds, followed by the Millers (14.86) and Ted and Leo Heyens (14.02) rounding out the top five.
